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Cfiomas  g.  ctotnell  company 


Copyright,  1908,  by  Thomas  Y.  Crowell  &  Co. 


FOURTH  EDITION 


'  iQote 

Free  Life,  based  upon  a  bacca- 
laureate  address  delivered  by  Presi 
dent  Wilson  at  Princeton  University  during 
his  presidency  of  that  institution,  was  first 
published  in  1908.  This  new  edition  is  issued 
in  view  of  the  present  widespread  interest 
in  every  utterance,  spoken  or  written,  of 
our  leading  American  citizen,  scholar,  and 
statesman. 


262614 


And  be  not  conformed  to  this  world :  but  be 
ye  transformed  by  the  renewing  of  your  mind, 
that  ye  may  prove  what  is  that  good,  and  ac 
ceptable,  and  perfect,  will  of  God."  Rom.  xii :  2 


fut  3Ufe 


college  graduate  almost  I 
always  thinks  of  himself  as\ 
just  about  to  begin  life.  There  is  a  I 
great  deal  that  is  false  and  merely 
conventional  in  the  thought.  He  has 
been  in  the  midst  of  life  twenty 
years  and  more,  and  every  year  has 
added  to  the  intimacy  and  the  va 
riety  of  his  contact  with  the  per 
sons  and  the  circumstances  that  lay 
about  him.  Particularly  after  he  en 
tered  college  he  must  have  been 
aware  that  earlier  trammels  and 
safeguards  had  fallen  away  and  that 
he  was  put  upon  his  mettle  as  a  man 
to  win  a  place  and  make  a  career. 
What  happens  to  him  at  graduation 
is  no  sudden  or  violent  thing.  The 


free  life 


scene  will  only  slowly  widen  about 
him  as  hitherto. 

Of  course  it  is  true  in  respect  of 
most  young  men  that  the  paths  they 
have  trod  in  their  years  of  tutelage 
have  beensheltered  and  private  ways 
such  as  thoughtful  love  has  pre 
pared,  generation  after  generation, 
for  the  feet  of  the  boys  who  are  to 
be  nurtured  and  trained  for  the  work 
of  their  years  of  independence  and 
maturity.  I  pity  the  man  who  cannot 
look  back  to  those  delicious  seques 
tered  places  from  which  we  first 
saw  the  world,  that  dear  covert  made 
by  mothers'  and  fathers'  love  and 
kept  inviolable  by  all  the  gentle  arts 
of  guardian  care.  What  free  spaces 
there  were  for  play  and  all  light- 
hearted  sport!  How  generously  long 
those  golden  days  seemed,  and  with 
what  gracious  figures  they  were 
filled,  of  knights  and  fairies  and  he 
roes  who  seemed  our  very  com 
rades  !  How  slowly  the  years  moved, 


life 


and  how  good  it  was  that  they  were 
long  and  full  of  dreams ! 

The  years  presently  quickened  their 
pace,  you  remember,  and  when  we 
became  schoolboys  the  world  grew 
more  definite  about  us :  there  were 
fewer  dreams  and  more  realities. 
But  the  paths  were  still  sheltered 
and  delightful.  There  was  no  anxious 
shifting  for  ourselves:  the  plan  of 
our  days  was  made  for  us.  They  were 
still  free  days,  made  for  sport  and 
pleasure.  School  hours  and  study 
only  gave  zest  to  play  and  to  all  the 
unchartered  liberties  of  the  mind. 
We  did  not  come  upon  short  days 
and  engrossing  tasks  and  the  feeling 
that  work  was  the  veritable  master 
in  all  things  until  we  got  to  college ; 
and  even  there  we  kept,  perhaps 
kept  too  long,  the  spirit  of  boys,  and 
made  the  work  as  much  as  might  be 
an  incident  still,  and  not  an  occupa 
tion. 

In  a  very  real  sense,  therefore, 

3 


free  Life 


are  at  the  threshold  of  the  life  which 
is  to  mean  constant  and  independ 
ent  endeavor,  the  actual  making  of 
the  careers  you  have  been  looking 
forward  to ;  and  this  is  the  day,  the 
very  sacred  day  of  special  couns^lr 
when  we  ask  ourselves  what  chart 
and  mode  of  life  we  have  found  by 
which  to  determine  and  make  safe 
our  course  of  life  henceforth,  by 
which  to  make  sure  of  hope  and 
courage  to  sustain  us  as  we  break 
up  these  dear  comradeships,  leave  a 
little  world  that  has  known  us,  and 
severally  seek  places  for  ourselves 
Lamong  strangers/The  text  of  Scrip 
ture  that  has  seemed  to  come  most 
directly  to  meet  my  thought  as  I 
pondered  this  turning-point  in  your 
life  is  that  which  is  contained  in  cer 
tain  words  to  be  found  in  the  second 
verse  of  the  twelfth  chapter  of  Ro 
mans:  "Be  not  conformed  to  this 
world :  but  be  ye  transformed  by  the 
renewing  of  your  mind,  that  ye  may 
4 


life 


prove  what  is  that  good,  and  accept 
able,  and  perfect,  will  of  God." 

It  may  seem  strange  and  futile 
counsel  to  give  to  a  company  of 
young  men  who  are  about  to  go  out 
into  the  world  to  ask  a  living  of  it— 
a  chance  to  serve  it,  to  partake  of  its 
life  and  of  its  rewards— to  tell  them 
that  they  must  not  conform  to  what 
they  find,  must  not  accept  the  rules 
of  the  life  they  enter  as  novices, 
by  permission  and  not  by  right, 
which  they  enter  as  those  who  would 
learn  and  not  as  those  who  would 
teach.  Their  advice  will  neither  be 
asked  nor  accepted,  and  they  will  be 
laughed  at  for  their  pains  if  they  offer 
it.  But  the  counsel  of  the  words  I  have 
quoted  is  no  counsel  of  presumption. 
It  is  a  mere  counsel  of  integrity  The 
" world"  is  no  fixed  thing  or  order 
of  life  that  stands  unchanged  from 
generation  to  generation,  or  even 
from  day  to  day.  Its  habit  and  prac 
tice  change  with  every  generation 

5 


free  Life 


that  rules  it,  and  your  generation  is 
to  come,  one  of  these  days,  upon  its 
years  of  rule.  Have  you  anything  in 
your  hearts  which  will  distinguish 
you  from  the  common  run  of  men 
who  lose  themselves  in  the  mass  and 
never  emerge  again  carrying  any 
light  of  their  own? 
"Be  not  conformed  to  this  world," 
— this  world  that  is  always  chan 
ging,  that  is  never  sure  that  it  sees 
any  fixed  points  or  stands  upon  any 
lasting  foundation.  You  have  been 
given  an  opportunity  to  get  the  off 
ing  and  perspective  of  books,  of  the 
truths  which  are  of  no  age,  but  run 
unbroken  and  unaltered  throughout 
the  changeful  life  of  all  ages.  You 
know  the  long  measurements,  the 
high  laws,  by  which  the  world's  pro 
gress  has  ever  been  gauged  and  as 
sessed, —  laws  of  sound  thinkingand 
pure  motive  which  seem  to  lie  apart 
in  calm  regions  which  passion  can 
not  disturb,  into  whose  pure  air  wan- 
6 


free  life 


der  no  mists  or  confusions  or  threats 
of  storm.  Amidst  every  altered  as 
pect  of  time  and  circumstance  the  hu 
man  heart  has  remained  unchanged. 
No  doubt  there  were  simpler  ages, 
when  the  things  which  now  per 
plex  us  in  hope  and  conduct  seemed 
very  plain.  If  life  confuses  us  now, 
no  doubt  it  is  because  we  do  not  see 
it  simply  and  see  it  whole.  Look  back 
more  often  and  you  shall  find  your 
vision  adjusted  for  the  look  ahead. 
Reflections  like  these  seem  to  me 
to  spring  naturally  to  the  thought 
out  of  the  words  of  Scripture  coun 
sel  I  have  read.  "Be  not  conformed 
to  this  world :  but  be  ye  transformed 
by  the  renewing  of  your  mind,"  — by 
that  simplification  of  motive  and  of 
standard  which  is  a  return  to  a  sort 
of  youth  and  naturalness  of  thought 
drawn  out  of  those  only  fountains 
of  perpetual  youth,  the  fountains  of 
just  thought  and  true  feeling.  At 
them,  and  only  at  them,  do  you  get 

7 


life 


a  veritable  and  constant  renewal  of 
your  minds:  the  refreshment  which 
brings  back  the  taste  for  all  things 
sweet  and  primitive  in  their  truth. 
"These  fountains  have  always  lain 
aboutyou, — when  you  were  children, 
when  you  were  gro wingy ouths,  since 
you  became  men  with  open  eyes, 
here  in  college. 

-  Some  of  them  are  the  fountains  of 
learning,  which  have  here  been  so 
accessible  to  you.  If  their  waters 
have  not  tasted  pure  and  sweet  to 
you,  with  a  tang  of  the  wholesome 
earth  that  renews  all  things,  it  is 
because  you  have  drunk  of  them 
neither  often  enough  nor  copiously 
I  enough  to  wash  the  dust  of  the  corn- 
Won  road  from  your  palates.  Learn 
ing  is  knowledge  purged  of  all  that 
is  untested  and  ephemeral.  It  is  nei 
ther  the  rumour  of  the  street  nor  the 
talk  of  the  shop  nor  the  conjecture 
of  the  salon.  It  has  been  purified  and 
sifted  in  quiet  rooms  to  which  pass- 
8 


free  Life 


ing  fashions  of  thought  do  not  pene 
trate.  It  has  passed  through  mind 
after  mind  like  water  through  the 
untainted  depths  of  the  earth,  and 
springs  to  the  places  of  its  revela 
tion,  not  a  thing  of  the  surface,  but  a 
thing  from  within  where  the  sources 
of  thought  lie.  Men  come  and  go, 
but  these  things  abide,  like  the  face 
of  the  heavens.  Age  is  linked  with 
age  by  the  permanence  of  the  phy 
sical  universe  and  the  unchanging 
nature  of  the  human  spirit.  Hearts 
are  ever  the  same,  whatever  the  set 
ting  of  the  stage  or  the  plot  of  the 
play. 

C  And  so  the  fountains  of  learning 
become  the  fountains  of  perpetual 
youth.]  At  them  are  our  minds  re- 
newea;  at  them  do  we  drink  of  the 
pure  waters  undefiled  whose  sources 
lie  below  all  circumstance,  all  ac 
cident,  all  surface  temperature  or 
season.  Afterwe  have  tasted  of  them 
much  of  the  talk  of  the  day  seems 

9 


life 


like  the  mere  lees  of  cheap  wine, 
of  the  vintage  of  yesterday.  We  are 
renewed  by  learning  in  the  sense 
that  our  minds  are,  as  it  were, 
brought  back  to  the  originals  and 
first  bases  of  thought,  to  direct  com 
munion  with  all  that  is  primitive  and 
permanent  and  beyond  analysis  or 
conjecture:  as  our  manners  are  re 
newed—that  is,  simplified— when 
social  convention  and  all  mere 
fashion  falls  away  in  the  presence 
of  danger,  of  sincere,  unselfish  love, 
and  of  all  pure  passion;  as  our  lungs 
are  renewed  by  the  pure,  untainted 
air  of  free  uplands  or  by  the  keen 
breath  of  the  wind  that  comes  out 
of  the  hills.  Learning  has  come  into 
the  world,  not  merely  to  clear  men's 
eyes  and  give  them  mastery  over 
nature  and  human  circumstance, 
but  also  to  keep  them  young,  never 
staled,  always  new,  like  the  stars  and 
the  hills  and  the  sea  and  the  vagrant 
winds,  which  make  nothing  of  times 
10 


free  Life 


or  occasions,  but  live  always  in  se 
rene  freedom  from  any  touch  of  de 
cay,  the  sources  of  their  being  some 
high  law  which  we  cannot  disturb. 
But  the  fountains  of  learning  are 
not  the  only  fountains  of  perpetual 
youth  and  renewal.  There  are  other 
springs  of  the  spirit  which,  like  the 
springs  of  learning,  renew  us  from 
age  to  age  in  all  our  spiritual  quali 
ties,  which  hold  us  to  the  originals 
of  all  that  is  fresh  and  enjoyable 
in  the  life  from  which  we  draw  our 
strength,  i  There  are  the  fountains 
of  friendship,  copious,  free,  inex 
haustible,  confined  to  no  time  or 
region  or  season.  Do  we  not  know 
them?  Do  they  not  abound  in  this 
place?  Whether  we  have  resorted 
to  the  fountains  of  learning  or  not, 
though  we  may  have  neglected  them 
in  our  folly,  we  have  known  the  re 
freshment  of  these  other  sources  of 
renewal,  these  sweet  fountains  of 
friendship,— have  drunk  of  them  al- 

ii 


CIjc  free  life 


most  to  intoxication  here  in  this 
place  of  comradeships.  I  hope  that 
we  have  drunk  of  them  with  com 
prehending  hearts,  perceiving  the 
true  and  excellent  quality  of  the 
sweet  waters  we  quaffed.  If  pure 
and  taken  with  pure  lips,  they  will 
have  given  us  taste  of  unselfishness 
and  self-sacrifice.  That  is  not  true 
friendship  which  proceeds  merely 
from  the  action  of  a  self-pleasing 
taste,  which  is  nothing  more  than 
a  self-indulgent  pleasure,  It  is  very 
delightful  to  consort  with  compan 
ions  who  gratify  our  zest  for  good 
fellowship,  amuse  us  with  gay  talk 
and  entertaining  jest,  walk  our  own 
familiar  ways  of  thought  and  feeling, 
welcome  our  coming  and  never  bore 
us;  who,  if  dull,  are  dull  to  our  liking, 
of  the  quality  of  dullness  that  rests 
4  and  reassures  us.  ,But  friendship  is 
a  much  larger,  much  finer,  much 
deeper  thing,  than  this  mere  relish 
of  good  company.  It  is  a  great  deal 
12 


free  life 


more  than  mere  congenial  compan 
ionship.  Let  true  and  deep  affection 
once  grip  you ;  let  interest  and  plea 
sure  once  deepen  into  insight  and 
sympathy  and  a  sense  of  vital  kin 
ship  of  mind  and  spirit,  and  the  re 
lationship  takes  on  an  energy  and 
a  poignancy  you  had  not  dreamed 
of  in  your  easy  search  for  pleasure. 
Spirit  leaps  to  spirit  with  a  new 
understanding,  a  new  eagerness,  a 
new  desire :  and  then  you  may  make 
proof  whether  it  be  true  friendship 
or  not  by  the  quick  and  certain  test 
whether  you  love  yourself  or  your 
friend  more  at  any  moment  of  di 
vided  interest. 

True  friendship  is  of  a  royal  liiie- 
age.  It  is  of  the  same  kith  and  breed 
ing  as  loyalty  and  self-forgetting  de 
votion,  and  proceeds  upon  a  higher 
principle  even  than  they.  For  loyalty 
may  be  blind,  and  friendship  must 
not  be ;  devotion  may  sacrifice  prin 
ciples  of  right  choice  which  friend- 

13 


free  life 


ship  must  guard  with  an  excellent 
and  watchful  care.  You_must  act 

I-  in  your  friend's  interest  whether  it 
please  him  or  not:  the  object  of  love 

*  is  to  serve,  not^ to  win.  It  is  a  hard 
saying^  Iknowy— who  shall  be  pure 
enough  to  receive  it?  There  is  but 
one  presence  in  which  it  can  be 
made  plain  and  acceptable,  and  that 
is  the  presence  of  Christ,  where  it 
may  stand  revealed  in  the  light  of 
that  example  which  makes  all  duty 
to  shine  with  the  face  of  privilege 
and  of  exalted  joy. 

Here  are  the  fountains  of  real  re 
newal.  I  suppose  that  we  can  speak 
of  our  minds  as  indeed  renewed 
when  they  are  carried  back  in  vivid 
consciousness  to  some  first  and  pri 
mal  standard  of  thought  and  duty ; 
to  images  which  seem  to  issue  di 
rect  from  the  God  and  Father  of  our 
spirits,  fresh  with  immediate  crea 
tion,  clear  as  if  they  had  the  light  of 
the  first  morning  upon  them, — as 
14 


free  life 


those  who  go  back  to  the  very 
springs  of  being.  It  is  thus  of  neces 
sity  that  our  renewal  comes  through 
love,  through  pure  motive,  through 
intimate  contact  with  whatever  re 
minds  us  of  what  is  permanent  and 
forever  real,  whether  we  taste  it  in 
the  fountains  of  learning,  of  friend 
ship,  or  of  divine  example,  the  crown 
alike  of  friendship  and  of  trutho  f 
To  one  deep  fountain  of  revelation 
and  renewal  few  of  you,  I  take  it  for 
granted,  have  had  access  yet,— I 
mean  the  fountain  of  sorrow,  a  foun 
tain  sweet  or  bitter  according  as  it 
is  drunk  in  submission  or  in  rebel 
lion,  in  love  or  in  resentment  and 
deep  dismay.  I  will  not  tell  you  of 
these  waters ;  if  you  have  not  tasted 
them,  it  would  be  futile,  —  and  some 
of  you  will  understand  without  word 
of  mine.  I  can  only  beg  that  when 
they  are  put  to  your  lips,  as  they 
must  be,  you  will  drink  of  them  as 
those  who  seek  renewal  and  know 

15 


tftte  life 


how  to  make  of  sadness  a  mood  of 
enlightenment  and  of  hope. 

You  will  see  that  I  but  go  about  to 
elucidate  a  single  theme:  that  all 
individual  human  life  is  a  struggle, 
when  rightly  understood  and  con 
ducted,  against  yielding  in  weak 
accommodation  to  the  changeful, 
temporary,  ephemeral  things  about 
us,  in  order  that  we  may  catch  that 
permanent,  authentic  tone  of  life 
which  is  the  voice  of  the  Spirit  of 
God,- 

"A  presence  that  disturbs  us  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts ;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting: 

suns, 

And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man ; 
A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  cf  all 

thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

It  is  not  a  thing  remote,  obscure, 
poetical,  but  a  very  real  thing,  that 
16 


free  Life 


lives  in  the  consciousness  of  every 
one  of  us.  Every  thoughtful  man, 
every  man  not  merely  of  vagrant 
mind,  has  been  aware,  not  once,  but 
many  times,  of  some  unconquerable 
spirit  that  he  calls  himself,  which 
is  struggling  against  being  over 
borne  by  circumstance,  against  be 
ing  forced  into  conformity  with 
things  his  heart  is  not  in,  things 
which  seem  to  deaden  him  and  de 
prive  him  of  his  natural  independ 
ence  and  integrity,  so  that  his  indi 
viduality  is  lost  and  merged  in  some 
common,  undistinguishable  mass, 
the  nameless  multitudes  of  a  world 
that  ceaselessly  shifts  and  alters 
and  is  never  twice  the  same.  He 
feels  instinctively  that  the  only  vic 
tory  lies  in  nonconformity.  He  must 
adjust  himself  to  these  things  that 
come  and  go  and  have  no  base  or 
principle,  but  he  must  not  be  sub 
dued  by  them  or  lose  his  own  clear 
lines  of  chosen  action. 

17 


free  life 


The  college  man,  particularly  if, 
while  he  studied,  he  has  lived  as  we 
live  here,  where  the  world  is  repro 
duced  in  small,  with  its  comrade 
ships  and  rivalries  and  organiza 
tions,  its  social  compulsions  and  its 
voluntary  efforts  of  individuals  and 
of  societies,  is  entitled  to  think  that 
he  can  distinguish  the  permanent 
from  the  ephemeral,  determine  what 
he  will  ignore,  what  accept.  He 
should  have  learned  that  noncon 
formity  is  not  antagonism;  that  he 
is  not  undertaking  the  impossible 
and  ridiculous  task  of  rebuking  and 
reconstructing  a  world  established 
and  independent  of  him ;  that  what 
he  is  attempting  is  what  I  may  term 
an  influential  nonconformity,  which 
adds  a  new  item  of  force  to  the  world, 
—adds  a  man  who  thinks  for  him 
self,  a  man  renewed  by  fresh  contact 
with  the  sources  and  originals  of 
thought  and  inspiration,  and  ready 
to  give  the  world  just  that  occa- 
18 


Clje  free  Life 


sional  thrill  of  reminder  which  keeps 
the  breath  of  progress  and  of  re 
newal  in  its  nostrils.  The  world 
always  responds  to  the  impulse 
when  it  finds  an  authentic  man, 
whom  it  cannot  crush  or  ignore,  who 
speaks  alwayswords  of  his  own,  and 
yet  who  flings  no  foolish  defiance  to 
his  generation,  is  ready  for  all  gen 
erous  cooperation,  is  an  eager  ser 
vant  of  his  day  and  time,  not  its 
opponent  or  critic  of  destruction,  — 
just  a  self-respecting,  thoughtful, 
unconquerable  human  spirit. 

"Be  not  conformed  to  this  world:  but 
be  ye  transformed  by  the  renewing 
of  your  mind."  This  transformation 
is  no  apotheosis,  it  is  no  changing  of 
men  into  angels,  no  transmutation 
of  common  flesh  into  stuff  of  immor 
tality.  It  is  a  transformation  effect 
ed  by  the  renewing  of  your  minds, 
a  transformation  of  attitude  and 
motive,  of  purpose,  of  point  of  view. 
It  is  the  transformation  effected  in 

19 


free  life 


the  spirit  itself  by  seeing  the  world 
as  a  work  of  God,  in  its  largeness 
and  entirety,  contained  in  no  single 
generation,  lasting,  a  thing  of  spirit, 
from  age  to  age,  from  friendship  to 
friendship,  from  love  to  love;  knit 
together  of  human  beings,  spirits 
great  and  small,  inspired  and  paltry, 
lifted  or  debased  by  victory  or  defeat 
in  a  continual  struggle  to  see  and 
receive  the  truth;  a  mode  of  ener 
gy  serene,  augmenting,  persistent. 
Every  great  thought  and  principle 
works  its  transformation  upon  the 
spirits  of  those  who  receive  it,  and  a 
mind  renewed  is  a  mind  transformed. 
The  university  has  been  a  place  of 
transformation  for  you,  whether  you 
willed  it  to  be  or  not:  the  question  is 
only  in  how  great  a  degree  you  have 
been  transformed.  You  are  not  what 
you  were  when  you  came  here :  you 
cannot  have  escaped  some  wider 
view  of  men  and  of  truth  and  of  cir 
cumstance  and  of  nature  than  you 
20 


tfree  Iffe 


had  when  you  came  here  unformed 
boys;  and  for  some  of  you  the  trans 
formation  has  been  complete.  You 
neither  think  nor  purpose  as  you  did 
before  the  processes  of  our  teaching 
and  our  life  wrought  upon  you;  and 
now  you  are  about  to  have  occasion 
to  show  how  vital  the  process  has 
been. 

The  transformed  university  man, 
whose  thought  and  will  have  been 
in  fact  renewed  out  of  the  sources 
of  knowledge  and  of  love,  is  one 
of  the  great  dynamic  forces  of  the 
world.  We  live  in  an  age  disturbed, 
confused,  bewildered,  afraid  of  its 
own  forces,  in  search  not  merely  of 
its  road,  but  even  of  its  direction. 
There  are  many  voices  of  counsel, 
but  few  voices  of  vision;  there  is 
much  excitement  and  feverish  activ 
ity,  but  little  concert  of  thoughtful 
purpose.  We  are  distressed  by  our 
own  ungoverned,  undirected  ener 
gies  and  do  many  things,  but  no- 

21 


free  life 


thing  long.  It  is  our  duty  to  find  our 
selves.  It  is  our  privilege  to  be  calm 
and  know  that  the  truth  has  not 
changed,  that  old  wisdom  is  more 
to  be  desired  than  any  new  nostrum, 
that  we  must  neither  run  with  the 
crowd  nor  deride  it,  but  seek  sober 
counsel  for  it  and  for  ourselves. 
Our  true  wisdom  is  in  our  ideals. 
Practical  judgments  shift  from  age 
to  age,  but  principles  abide;  and 
more  stable  even  than  principles  are 
the  motives  which  simplify  and  en 
noble  life.  That,  I  suppose,  is  why 
the  image  of  Christ  has  grown,  not 
less,  but  more  distinct  in  the  con 
sciousness  of  the  race  since  the  tra 
gic  day  in  which  He  died  upon  the 
cross.  How  unlike  in  every  external 
circumstance  was  that  day  to  our 
own;  how  the  world  has  changed 
and  shifted  in  every  institution  and 
every  circumstance  since  the  day 
when  all  men  were  provincials  of 
Rome;  and  yet  there  has  been  no 
22 


life 


age  to  which  Christ  did  not  seem  to 
belong  as  truly  and  intimately  as 
he  belonged  to  the  world  in  which 
Palestine  was  property  of  imperial 
Rome,  and  Joseph  and  Mary  ob 
scure  subjects  of  the  Caesar.  He  is 
the  only  permanent  person  of  his 
tory,  the  only  being  who  was  of  no 
age  because  he  was  of  all,  the  only 
complete  and  unalterable  epitome 
of  what  man  is  and  what  man  would 
be,  a  creature  of  two  worlds,  the 
world  that  changes  and  the  world 
that  changes  not,  —the  world  where 
spirit  but  struggles  for  recognition, 
and  the  world  in  which  spirit  is  re 
leased  to  know  its  own  freedom  and 
perfection.  How  the  task  of  renewal 
and  transformation  is  simplified  for 
us  by  his  person  and  example,  so 
clear  to  our  vision,  so  easy  to  be  un 
derstood,  so  dear  to  every  right  in 
stinct  in  us,— our  divine  kinsman,  to 
whom  our  spirits  yearn  whenever 
stirred  by  pain  or  hope! 

23 


free  Life 


And  if  Christ  is  adjusted  to  all  ages, 
he  is  conformed  to  none:  He  is  the 
only  true  citizen  of  the  world.  There 
is  in  him  constant  renewal,  the  fresh, 
undying  quality  that  draws  always 
direct  from  the  sources  of  know 
ledge  and  of  conduct.  He  interprets 
—-only  He  can  perfectly  interpret— 
our  text.  His  is  the  nonconformity 
of  the  perfect  individual,  unsophis 
ticated,  unstaled,  unsubdued.  His  is 
the  perfect  learning  distilled  into 
wisdom,  the  perfect  friendship  lifted 
to  the  utter  heights  of  self-sacrifice, 
the  perfect  sorrow  steeped  in  hope, 
which  keep  his  mind  and  spirit  naif, 
spontaneous,  creative,  the  cause, 
not  the  result,  of  circumstance.  Not 
all  the  hoarded  counsel  of  the  world 
is  worth  the  example  of  a  single  per 
son:  it  is  abstract,  intangible  unti' 
incarnated;  and  here,  incarnate,  i 
the  man  Christ  who  in  his  own  lifi 
and  person  shows  us  and  all  th< 
world  "what  is  that  good,  and  ac 
24 


free  life 


ceptable,  and  perfect,  will  of  God" 
which  would  have  us  see  in  the  face 
of  all  knowledge,  of  all  love,  of  all 
experience,  the  long  lines  of  light 
which  illuminate  the  meaning  of  our 
lives, — lines  that  blaze  unbroken 
out  of  the  elder  ages  that  have  gone 
and  sweep  past  us  into  the  mysteri 
ous  days  whither  we  go,  from  which, 
one  by  one,  we  draw  the  veil  away. 
In  an  ancient  place  of  learning  we 
stand  where  generations  meet  and 
merge,  where  ages  render  their 
common  reckoning;  and  the  teach 
ing  of  a  university  with  regard  to 
the  long  processes  of  human  life 
should  be  the  same  as  the  Master's: 
that  every  soul  that  is  truly  to  live 
must  be  born  again,  must  come  fresh 
into  its  own  age  with  the  spirit  of 
immortality — which  is  the  spirit  of 
sternal  youth— upon  it,  the  bright 
ness  of  another  morning  of  creation 
about  it,  the  dayspring  from  on  high. 
"Be  not  conformed  to  this  world: 

25 


free  life 


but  be  ye  transformed  by  the  renew 
ing  of  your  mind:  that  ye  may  prove 
what  is  that  good,  and  acceptable, 
and  perfect,  will  of  God"  which  is 
without  date  or  age  or  end  and  which 
gives  to  every  one  of  us  a  like  im 
mortal  youth  and  liberty  and  power. 

I  have  tried  to  give  you  in  these 
parting  words,  on  this  solemn  day, 
some  glimpse  of  spiritual  things.  I 
hope  the  words  have  not  been  too 
mystical,  too  remote  from  the  voca 
bulary  of  :what  we  ordinarily  think 
and  say.  We  have  gone  a  happy 
journey  of  four  years  together.  Our 
comradeship  has  not  depended  up 
on  an  actual  personal  acquaintance 
with  one  another.  Nothing  happens 
here  that  does  not  happen  to  all  of  us: 
there  is  no  current  of  our  lives  which 
we  do  not  all  feel.  We  have  had  much 
counsel  together.  Though  you  hand 
your  function  of  counsel  on  to-day  to 
those  who  are  to  succeed  you,  you 
26 


must  know  that  you  will  leave  much 
behind  you  that  is  your  permanent 
contribution  of  love  to  the  growth 
and  wholesomeness  of  the  place. 
And  you  can  never  be  spiritually 
severed  from  your  Alma  Mater. 
Some  part  of  her  will  always  live  in 
you. 

And  it  is  just  that  fact  which  I  wish 
might  be  interpreted  to  you  and, 
through  you,  to  all  the  world.  This 
place  is  but  a  material  image  that 
changes  from  age  to  age:  the  real 
university  is  a  spirit  which  goes  with 
you,  as  it  stays  with  us,— the  spirit 
of  learning,  which  is  always  young 
and  which  does  not  conform  to  this 
world ;  the  spirit  of  friendship,  which 
unlocks  the  secret  of  loyalty  and  of 
self-sacrifice ;  the  spirit  which  seeks 
intimate  contact  with  the  springs  of 
motive,  and  which  lifts  us  into  the 
presence  of  Christ. 

It  is  a  solemn  thing  to  look  one 
another  for  the  last  time  in  the  eyes, 

27 


to  grasp  hands  and  say  farewell ;  but 
we  do  not  in  fact  break  company  if 
we  have  indeed  been  linked  in  spirit. 
Be  brave;  walk  with  open  and 
uplifted  eyes;  let  neither  hardship 
nor  sorrow  touch  you  with  dismay. 
Nothing  but  our  own  weakness  can 
taint  the  integrity  of  manly  candour 
and  simple  uprightness.  God  send 
you  stout  hearts  in  all  weather.  Our 
love  and  our  faith  shall  follow  you. 
We  pledge  you  with  all  good  cheer 
for  the  long  journey,  and  pray  God 
we  shall  all  meet  at  home  at  its  end. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 
on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

10  JU!  '§78  1         N 

W  2619857 

REC'D  :  '•> 

REC'D 

JUL  1  0  1957 

NO\Jl2i65'll^ 

wwfc»   *  I/    rCTwf 

LOAN  DEPTV. 

/    ^\  'C    HW~*t 

LIBRARY  USE  0  U 

MAY  n  p  mnc 

MAR  2  6  1960 

HW  /  h  jjjgg 

wrrr»r»> 

r     Q  f\^5  ^ 

OCT    SlQflhviY 

o^    (or 

LD 
(B93flslO)476 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


U.  C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  "LIBRARY 


